I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Fit of the Week: Small gang Scimitar

You know, it surprises me that I've never gotten around to a good PvP Scimitar fitting. Here you go:

[Scimitar, Buffer Scimi]
Reactor Control Unit II
Power Diagnostic System II
Power Diagnostic System II
Power Diagnostic System II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Light Armor Maintenance Bot I x5
Warrior II x4

This is a tight fit. It needs Energy Grid Upgrades V right out of the gate. And if you don't have Shield Upgrades V, you'll have to downgrade the gun to the smallest AutoCannon available, but that's OK. You're obviously not flying a Scimitar for DPS. The point to the gun is to get on kill-mails until CCP gets around to correcting the fact that logi aren't on kill-mails. Otherwise, this fitting is about two things: staying in the fight as a healer, and staying alive while staying in the fight.

If you have the fitting skills though, this is a high-resist, high-buffer fit: 41k EHP. It's lowest un-boosted resist is to Kinetic damage, so you'll have to be careful of Drake spam for a few more weeks (after that, you can stay out of their range). But on the modern EVE battlefield, the two bigger dangers to logi are alpha and neuting. So a lot of speed and range is called for, as well as a good buffer to avoid being blapped off the field by Tornadoes or Oracles. This fit can do that admirably. Logi cargo is usually empty on the trip out, so it's handy to have a cap booster both to ensure the reps keep running and the resists keep operating. Being cap-stable is a luxury that you don't really have to buy. If you can stay in a fight for three or four minutes, that's plenty. If you need more time than that, bring Basilisks instead.

While it's easy for AB-fit Scimis to fit four reppers, it's tougher for a MWD one to do so. It can be done, but it requires sacrificing a lot of buffer to do it which isn't a smart move in the face of modern volley ships. It doesn't help you to have four reps if you get blapped right off the field before you can apply them... So for the moment, three reps is pretty standard for PvP Scimitars.

You can carry shield repair drones if you like, but a lot of roaming Scimitars carry some damage drones and a flight of armor drones instead. That gives you the potential to field-repair armor damage that might get inflicted during fights. This is particularly handy in fights in sov null-sec space where station repairs may not be available.

Carry a single Mindflood and X-Instinct booster in cargo for your biggest fight. The first will give you a little more cap. The second will somewhat reduce your signature radius, particularly under MWD. They're both very handy for this ship given its cap use and three mods producing sig bloom.

In addition, do remember that after December 4, you're going to have to be a little more careful about how you use this ship. Repping will cause you to inherit the flags that the ships you rep do, with the same timers on those flags. If they're firing weapons, effectively so are you. That means no jumping and no docking. If they're Suspect, so are you. That means anyone can shoot you. Et cetera. This "flag inheritance" will take away the logi's main defense right now, which is to orbit the nearest gate at 500m, wait to get primaried, wait to get reduced to 40% shields or so, then jump. Unless you're not providing reps for at least 60 seconds, you won't be able to do that any more. Instead, you're going to have to burn to the edge of the battle and try to stay out of the effective range of your attackers.

All in all, a single Scimitar is the perfect companion to a small (10-12 ship) roaming gang... until December 4. At that point, the Scimitar will become pretty much useless and you'll want to throw them in your hangar and forget about them for a year or two. More on that in my next post.

All Fits of the Week are intended as general guidelines only. You
may not have the skills needed for this exact fit. If you do not, feel
free to adjust the fit to suit to meet your skills, including using meta
3 guns and "best named" defenses and e-war. Ships can also be adjusted
to use faction or dead-space modules depending on the budget of the
pilot flying it. Each FOTW is intended as a general guide to introduce
you to concepts that will help you fit and to fly that particular type
of ship more aggressively and well.

You're not wrong. But these days an FC faced with a lot of ECM on the other side will just disengage, making whether you're jammed or not at least somewhat irrelevant.

In addition, post-Retribution, jamming logi isn't going to be as automatic as it has been in the past. After all, if you jam them, they have the right to jump away from the fight whereas if you keep them repping all you have to do is catch them.

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